


empty awake

by 23notecanon (epistaxiophilia)



Series: you broke time [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Emotions, M/M, Other, Sad Ending, a half step away from canon, demyx is khux pc, from before kh2 to barely after kh3, i dont wanna tag / but it won't let me tag & so uuuuhhhhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 15:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20342518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistaxiophilia/pseuds/23notecanon
Summary: a sequence of demyx related event spanning several years, including an origin, some light non-romantic xemdem, and then d e p r e s s i o n'Startling out of his frozen thoughts with a peep, he’s glad Xemnas is as straight forward as he’s generally apt to be, and so as Demyx still doesn’t find himself ready to sleep, his fingers find themselves once again to sitar, and a tune from his absent memory fragments the silence between the nearly forgotten rain outside.'





	1. Chapter 1

Stepping out from a dark corridor, Xemnas takes a breath of the fresh forest air, his surroundings aglow with the light of the sun pouring half-obscured through the leaf-layer overhead, beyond thick wooden masts that pierce high into the sky around him. If he wasn’t here for a distinct purpose, he might think a moment he would have enjoyed the sights and scents, but alas. Having wasted through the list of nobodies he, or his now other half had created, and spurned on by a requirement to the number 13, Xemnas feels out leads for the last 5 heads, and it draws him here to this wild, free place. So viscerally unlike the home he’s become familiar with, untamed wilderness that sets a sense of calm between the lines his non-existence occasionally harbours. Not real feelings, but enough that he’s caught standing there in the barest inclination of awe. After a moment, his focus returns and he sniffs at the open air.

The scent is quite cold, however, and while this powerful nobody has led him here to this place from the vast expanse of worlds, it will not triangulate its exact location within the endless stretch of trees and wilderness. Instead of setting a wild goose chase, Xemnas pads towards dusk-scouted civilization— albeit a small, sparsely inhabited village, but he finds they lack the expected xenophobia to a stranger such as himself. He turns on the charm regardless, remembering Xehanort’s kindness enough to imitate in the wake of requiring information, uninterested in fighting these peaceful villagers for it. As much as he easily _could_, why waste the strength when it’s easier just to pretend to be kind.

“Excuse me,” Xemnas speaks softly to a nearby homestead, a family occupied on their old, wooden porch. Like the forest around it, their house is encompassed in the nature this world fosters eagerly, moss and ivy sticking to the old log walls. Two older folks rocking in chairs, a younger male adult, and two rambunctious children of either gender who skitter around the yard playing tag; Xemnas notes mentally between them as he approaches with a meek-looking demeanor, “I have come a long way, and am looking for someone.”

“I’d say so,” the younger man rises from his lean across the railing, heading towards the porch stairs, “Can’t say I’ve seen a face like yours before.” He takes a few steps down to offer Xemnas a handshake, which he obliges on the knowledge of societal norms alone, firm and steady.

“No, as I said; I have travelled quite a distance. The person I search for may be unknown to you as well as he is known to me.”

Raising an eyebrow, the man takes a second to parse that sentence, a hand rising to rub his brow with the back, “You don’t know who you’re looking for?”

Shaking his head, no, “No, but it will be someone you might find quite… Empty, if I was to explain. Like a man without much thought.”

“… Hmn,” turning his head back towards his elders, because ‘mother help there’s an insane man on the lawn’. “Like a… ghost?”

“That could also be an apt way to describe this, yes.”

Rolling his eyes, he heads back up his stairs and offers Xemnas a dismissive wave, “Don’t know how to help someone find a ‘ghost’, stranger,” and he heads inside, leaving him alone with two children, and two elders. The older two give him somewhat of a stink-eye, mostly the man, so Xemnas heads back down to see if he can’t pry the curiosity of the children.

Eagerly, however, the boy already seemed to be listening. He looks as if he couldn’t be older than ten, and whispers loudly, “I know where to find a ghost!”

Offering the child a kind smile, Xemnas kneels down to become at his level, “Oh, is that right? Could you tell me where?”

The girl speaks up, a bit younger than her brother, and shyer to him, “We aren’t supposed to go down there anymore….”

“Oh, come on! We go down there all the time!”

“Sshh!” She shoves him, and skitters past Xemnas to head towards her home— and as he looks back around, the older woman stands now, peering down at the stranger accosting her grand children.

“She’s just a big baby!” The boy scoffs, and ‘whispers’ to Xemnas once again, leaning in close to his face. “There’s a fountain down the road! That’s where the ghost is. I mean, sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?” Xemnas hums, tilting a curious head down at him, “Would you show me?”

Calling down from her porch, the old woman interrupts, “It’s really just an old wives tale sort of thing, stranger. I wouldn’t waste your time on the imaginings of children.”

“Aww, grandma, I swear I seen it! And sis says she TOUCHED him once!”

“Don’t tell on me!” She shrills back down at him, as her grandma looks down to give her a discerning look.

Moving to stand at full height once more, he levels his amber gaze on the older woman, his soft facade fading. “With all due respect, it wouldn’t hurt me to look myself. It sounds reasonably like what I’m after, though my apologies if you’d rather your kin not lead me to falsehood,” he gestures to the boy at his side with a gloved hand. “The worst that could happen is my efforts scorned to nothing.”

“Why’d you even want to go ghost hunting? That stuff just gives me the spooks,” she shivers, hiking up her shoulders as her gaze falls towards the nearby pathway beyond their house.

“To free him, perhaps,” Xemnas replies with a pained tone, nose barely wrinkling at its bridge.

“.. To free a ghost?”

Leveling his amber gaze on the older woman once again, Xemnas blinks slowly, allowing a moment of reserved silence to pass, “Yes.”

Realizing now that this stranger is quite possibly as insane as her son seemed to think he was, the older woman keeps her mouth shut, swallowing roughly until Xemnas deigns to move his gaze somewhere else than piercing through her. Thankfully, in less than a minute, that rambunctious child at his heels breaks the silence, “I’ll show you! It’s kind of a walk, but…” The boy wrings his fingers together, looking to his sibling for help.

Xemnas equally looks to the sister, his expression softening again for her, alongside a wide gestured hand for her to join him. He offers the boy and his sister to lead the way, even inquisitively asking, “Oh, is that right? Could you tell me more about him?” With a huff, she does join him, and soon enough the three head off towards that pathway the older woman had been looking mournfully towards earlier. As they lead off, Xemnas feels eyes on his back— and a quick dusk inspection lets him know the father is following them at a distance. That’s fair. Who would let a strange man lead off into the forest alone with his children? Xemnas is impressed he’s letting the situation occur at all— but perhaps in his focus, he thinks once the stranger finds, or doesn’t find what he’s looking for, he’ll leave them all be to their peaceful life once again.

“Yeah! He’s not always there, like… not even usually, but sometimes he is. He doesn’t say anything, really. Just sits there. The adults think we’re all just making it up, but I swear it’s true!”

Gleefully, the girl speaks up, “I got him to blink once! I wanted to know if he was just a statue.”

“Ugh! I never get close enough to try— and you shouldn’t either,” he shoves her as they walk, and she responds with a sticking of her tongue and a raspberry. “I think he wants to be left alone.”

“I can’t believe you’re scared! You big baby!”

“I’m not scared! But…. I can’t believe you _AREN’T_ scared. It’s a ghost! And he sits there like a statue!”

Xemnas interrupts them, “Has he ever done anything but sit?”

“Uh—…huh.. No, not really…. Sometimes, when he sits there, the fountain starts up, I guess. It’s usually clogged with leaves and moss and stuff, but water comes from no where.”

Imitating a smile as he looks down to them, “That is very interesting.”

They chatter between the two of them as they walk, a leisurely pace for Xemnas though he sways with each step, high on his heels. It’s somewhat far, almost an hour of walking— he smells it at first, that water and dirt and moss, and then_ feels_ it, an empty void that pockets the world in his internal ‘vision’. Momentarily distracted by the sensation, he nearly walks into the children as they’ve paused, staring forwards in fright to what they see.

As the boy had described earlier— tucked between a vast swathe of overgrown greenery, a usually dead fountain spouts pitifully with life, water struggling to pour through its clogged internal piping. There, a pale figure sits on the lip of its stonework basin, delicately closed eyes framing a young but weary face obscured by loose blonde bangs, his posture leaning forwards with arms folded over his lap. Like the fountain beside him, he is littered with the ivy and leaf life that encompasses the area and his chosen seat, his clothes painting a picture alongside to the time he’s spent here, ratted and dirty, lost all of its colour in bleaching sunlight. Legs hang over the worn stone edge, but his feet are crossed, the only sign of movement a dragging footfall from where he just barely and only occasionally digs the toes of his worn shoes into the dirt beneath. Seeing as there’s no footprints leading there, and the way he’s decorated in overgrowth, Xemnas makes the educated assumption he’s been sat there for quite some time, unvisited and waiting. A ‘ghost’— but physical. A Nobody, clinging to its reality, though Xemnas knows not yet _why_. “Please stay here,” he rumbles to the children as he passes by them, brushing a gloved hand through the girl’s hair as he steps.

As he approaches, the other nobody does not move, respond or react to his presence— and he also isn’t breathing, explaining the girls described scene earlier as to wondering if he was a ‘statue’. Xemnas observes as he approaches closer now that the water flooding the ‘dead’ fountain leaks up the basin’s sidewall to pool beneath the figure. Up and through the cracks in the stonework, it loosely weaves itself into the ratted folds of the nobody’s clothes. It follows the thin ivies that trail up his arms and torso until it pools beneath his closed eyes— Not to say the water fuelling the fountain comes from tears, since it appears to be flooding upwards from the source beside him, but mimics the action of crying, which Xemnas considers might feel pitiful. He looks as if he couldn’t be more than 18, but since Xemnas recalls the ‘ghost’ been described as an ‘old wives’ tale, he assumes that the nobody has been here beyond any visible age. He’s been fairly certain nobody aging worked as long as they ‘felt’ aging, but this was some hefty, solid proof of that theory.

Slowly, a hand reaches down to weave itself into dirty, blonde locks, Xemnas offering him a soft, affectionate touch. A foot twitches beneath, that one he knows occasionally digs into the ground, but not much more attention is offered. Weakness, Xemnas feels that barest energy holding onto his existence and nothing more, and that tapping foot is all this wayward nobody can offer him— so in return for his offering of any response, Xemnas deigns the limitless _nothing_ to spare him. The two children watch in awe as the stranger is overcome with a red-pink glow, and a swathe of white and black thorns— the water from the fountain rushes through its clogged drains, barely flinching Xemnas’ expression as the backsplash hits his face, but he’s focused on the task at hand, and only assumes his gifted energy is working to spurn existence back into this vacant form.

After a moment of silence beyond the water rushing beside them, his eyes flick open in pain, dull sky-blue gaze staring dead ahead in confusion. His jaw drops as he remembers what ‘breathing’ is, stuttering gasps clicking through his throat as the memory of it finds him, and feigned life heaves into his non-existence. Xemnas allows him the time to ‘catch his breath’, or rather catch his reality, and as the water in the fountain subsides in its urgency for life, so does the nobody still caught in his grasp, his laboured wheezing waning. Softly, Xemnas plays with his hair, offering him physical kindness to reignite his memory. This one seems very,_ soft_, unlike the darkness hardened of his other 8, which will be.. interesting, to say the least. But, he is what Xemnas has found, and take him home he will. One doesn’t just sit and cling to its existence for a veritably impossible length of time and be entirely useless— or so Xemnas hopes.

Unexpectedly, he rasps from below mid-heaving, “H…hi… Who are… mnn,” and he blinks, eyes still unfocused as he looks up to Xemnas weakly.

Xemnas offers him his amber gaze in return, pulling back his hand and idly picking the overgrown vines from his worn clothes, “I am Xemnas. And who are you?”

“Ahhh…” His dull gaze falls to the waters edge, looking at the warped, rippling reflection of himself. “I remember…me, but.. I’m not _me _anymore…”

“What are you doing waiting here?”

“Uhhmmm.. I was waiting, for a friend,” he seems to think, though he doesn’t recall what friend, or any part of what they looked like.

“They aren’t coming,” Xemnas leans to the side to regain the nobody’s sight, showing him the handful of leaves and refuse he’s pulled off his unmoving body. “But _I_ have come for you,” and then he offers that gloved hand for him to take.

After a thought, and with lack of anything better to do, the nobody takes the offered hand, and lets himself be hoisted to standing. Weary on his legs, but it gives Xemnas a moment to peruse his memories for a name. His gaze follows Xemnas’ hands as he gestures about his head, once again overcome with that white light as Xemnas muses around his spattered thoughts. Uncomfortable, but he can’t feel to care about it— and Xemnas plucks out a few choice letters to toy around with.

“You are someone different now, yes. Cast out by your heart, and left here alone, disconnected and rejected. But_ I,_ will give you_ purpose_. Hold onto your memories, for they will guide your knowledge— but now, I deign_ you_ Demyx,” Xemnas speaks as he forms the new name between his palms, and offers Demyx to look upon this given name with the new life, or non-life it gives him.

Now, Demyx doesn’t think much of the memories he’s supposing to be holding onto, but since no one has spoken too him since… Since, well, since he can remember, he nods to Xemnas near excitedly, repeating it, “Demyx, yeah, ok… Yeah..” He looks back to the fountain again, and as he stands, the water still trails up and over the edge, following after his legs. “No, go back, stupid water,” he creaks, turning to face it and swat with an errant hand— but as he continues to back up, he backs directly into Xemnas with an ‘oop’.

It’s not as if Xemnas is ‘regretting’ his choice, but merely considering how ‘interesting’ it is going to be to bring this fool home. “I’ll sort that out. It can not follow you forever,” and he turns back towards where he came, the two children having disappeared back into the woods. It’s a good thing Xemnas has a good memory— but then again, he’s not obligated to return to the village. He could just leave. But he wants to ask a question. Demyx does not immediately come when Xemnas walks away, still confused and unwieldy on his feet, so he makes a quick judgement to grasp the ‘fresh’ being by a hand as he leads them away.

When he appears back from the woods to the homestead with the ‘ghost’ gripped in his hand, he hears the children scream and run before he sees them. Demyx shrinks back to that, but with Xemnas still dragging him along, he can’t escape like he seems he would like to. An unfortunate memory response for him to have, a fear of children screaming. Heading back towards the house from before, the old woman is leaning over the railing of her porch, eyes wide in surprise. “… Well, would you look at that.”

“Yes. Your ghost,” he gestures with the grasped hand, Demyx looking up in almost recognition, head tilting curious and staring with those dull, vacant eyes.

“Yeahp, that is… that’s the one alright. Can’t believe he… moves.”

“Would you answer me one last question, friend?”

“Yeah, I, uh…. I guess I can?”

“How long has this one sat there at that fountain, being sometimes told as old or young persons ‘tales’?”

Lips pursing, she rests her chin on her palm, and sighs, “Oh, probably since as long as I can remember. Since I was a little girl— and before that too. Nobody likes going down there to that fountain— and he never showed up once folks got past a certain age. Think they have to have that ‘light’ in them, y’know? To rise him out of hiding. Almost thought with you coming up, he’d stay hidden.”

Demyx is busy looking around in idle amusement, peering up at the birds that fly by, and the wind that rustles the trees around them. Giving him a long, inspective glance to that new knowledge, Xemnas looks back to the woman after a moment, “That is very curious. I might feel a mote of pity I’m taking your tale away.”

“Don’t be! There’s no sense in something, someone, wasting away for eternity in loneliness in a secluded village.”

“I am likely the only person in the worlds who can do him any help, I assure you. For your assistance, may I give you advice?”

Tilting a confused head, Xemnas momentarily releases Demyx to head up her stairs before she can reply. The asking was only a formality. “What… What for?”

Raising a palm to her door, an X burns itself into the wood, like the thorns that encompass his limb in magic. “The next time, if there is a next time, someone appears in your village with a jacket such as mine,” he gestures to himself, “It will be on far less friendly terms. Beware of demons that skitter in the shadows, and keep your precious hearts guarded until the end, or face the fate such as this ghost has,” he warns her, completely vaguely, before heading back downstairs. She is wordless in response to his cryptic warning, and he takes that silence on her end as an invite to leave unimpeded.

That water is still curiously trailing after him, however, and Xemnas muses silently as they head back into the woods to think of an answer to that. He would prefer if his new already troublesome child didn’t summon and track water into his castle endlessly. First and foremost, however— a moment of focus, and from the void, Xemnas pulls out a black jacket, shaking it out and offering it, “Put this on.”

A moment of curious blinking, but Demyx does reach up, unzipping and pulling it over his tattered clothes. “What’s this?”

“It will protect you from the darkness you will face when we travel to your new home. Do not remove it unless I tell you you can— or you _will_ fade, no matter how you’ve clung to reality from now.”

“Ahhh..” He swallows roughly, looking down at himself. “… I gotta wear it… forever?” Snagging a tattered end of his shirt, wide eyes look up at him like a kicked puppy. Oh boy.

“No,” Xemnas rumbles back, his gaze wandering down him and to the water at his feet, “When we return to your new home, you can change more properly.”

“O-oh, ok, yeah,” and he nods, fulling zipping the offered jacket closed, tucking his head underneath the hood and returning his expression neutral.

They stand there in silence for a long while while Xemnas thinks, occasionally peering through Demyx’ spattered memory for ideas to this water problem— when Demyx starts to hum to himself. Thinking to interrupt and question him at first, Xemnas pauses and watches as this little tune that creaks from his throat and memory starts to weave the water around his legs, though Demyx seems completely oblivious to this.

With some more minutes of choice focusing, Xemnas chooses and forms a ‘weapon’ for him, though he thinks the water he calls to his aid will be the truest protection, if he can offer a better mouthpiece for the music that tames it. “Here,” offering the large stringed instrument, that Demyx looks down at with the utmost confusion. “_Play_ those tunes in your mind rather than hum them. See what makes that water respond.”

“I… can play this?”

“Yes.”

Still looking unsure, Demyx strums a few discordant notes, and the water spews about pathetically akin to the disjointed tones. But, with the knowledge of it in his mind, he reaches up to tuning rods, idly flicking with them until something more harmonious comes from those strings. To Xemnas pleasure, the water abates as Demyx focuses to control it, and soon enough, there’s no more puddle at his feet. “That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Yes. I need you to control that.”

“I can do that,” he nods, sure that this is one thing he can manage.

“Come then. I have other things to attend to.” There’s still 4 more heads to account for in his obsessive 13, and he can already feel another one rising from far away now that this one is awake once more.

\---

After a quick but exceptionally tiring wade through a dark corridor, Demyx finds himself in a disturbing and wildly unfamiliar place to his former home. Just as quickly as he arrives, Xemnas sits him up in a living area, on a couch, and disappears back into the darkness. Now, he’s quite more than used to being alone— but he’s _conscious_ now, and confused, and… He feels like he _should_ be nervous, scared, but the emotion never rises past what he thinks he_ should_ be feeling. Pulling out the sitar that his new friend had made him earlier, Demyx takes these idle thoughts and doubts, projecting them into working on controlling the water as he has been so dutifully ordered to do so. Droplets of water form in the air near his feet, dancing along like little music notes to the melody of his distant memory’s creation.

Without any concept of time, perhaps minutes pass, or hours, but his attention is perked to the sounds of voices. Once again— shouldn’t I be nervous? But instead, Demyx just sits there on the couch he was placed, still strumming his instrument as three figures appear from a corridor across the room, only shrinking back slightly into the hood still pulled over his head.

First, a taller man, with long blond hair and piercing emerald eyes, who shrills to behind him, “No- he says he _feels_ them, but I can’t work with that kind of baseless theorem!”

Behind him, a tired older fellow, hair pulled back into a long ponytail, one eye closed to the shriller man’s rambling while the other hides behind an eyepatch. “Yeaahhhhh, I know, but if that’s what he’s going on, what else is he gonna tell us.” It sounds like this isn’t the first time the shrill man has complained about this unknown problem.

A third— a tall, imposing figure, his gaze that fine line between navy and violet, whose long black dreads drape across his shoulders and back despite an attempt at taming them with bindings, “Would you _quit_-“ less patient than the second one, his voice rumbles into the hollow room, “If you don’t think you can be_ help_— than at least stop being a_ pest_.”

“ExcUSE, I am not being a pest-AGH!” That thought interrupted, he makes eye-contact with Demyx from across the room, jolting from his neutral standing position to the utmost startled with a hiked-up leg at the fact that anyone else was in there, let alone an intruder. In suite, the other two follow his line of sight to Demyx as well, and vacantly, with his dull and lackluster sky blues hidden slightly beneath the lip of his hood, Demyx continues to strum his instrument as they look between him and each other curiously.

The third one approaches first, the imposing figure with long black dreads, head ducked low and challenging, his voice rough with an accent unlike the other two, “And who might_ you _be.”

Somehow, Demyx doesn’t feel himself to be the least bit intimidated, no matter how much he tells himself he should be. Instead, he looks up at him, still idling with his hands a soft tune, “Demyx.”

“Dem…_yx_— ah…” He looks back to the other two, waving a dismissive hand, “He _found one_.”

“… How!”

Humoured, the second one shrugs, shaking his head as he approaches now, “He probably ‘_felt’ _it! Just like he said he did!” Brushing past the third, he stares down Demyx with a curious, singular gold eye, its eyebrow raising. “And where did _you_ come from..?” Almost a hint of recognition in his gaze, but not enough to trigger any of them his apparent familiarity.

“Uhhmm… s-…somewhere.. I dunno,” he shrugs, legitimately without an idea of where Xemnas had pulled him from. “Somewhere… greener, than this.”

“You don’t remember? Being human?”

“Uh… I do but like, not… really? Wait… not human?” Demyx tilts up a curious head, gaze following the second stranger as he moves around him inspectively.

“No, friend.” He slaps a hand over his shoulder, before plopping to sit beside him on the couch, minding the wide neck of his sitar. The other two stand above him, staring discerningly and mumbling between one another. “You’re a _nobody_. Don’t you know?”

“That’s kind of rude.”

“No—“ he stops to stifle a laugh, “A Nobody. Like, a no-body. How long you been _out_, huh?”

“I don’t even remember being ‘out’,” Demyx finds himself remembering how to speak the way he might’ve used to speak, a hint of sass rolling into his dead tone.

“Well, here, I’ll fill you in then, I’m nice— or I_ was_ nice! Maybe.”

The third exhales a sharp laugh, “You were_ not_.”

“_Sshhhh_, let me be friendly to the new guy, he’s c_onfused_,” he presses a hand to his chest, looking offended at his ‘friend’

“Do what you will, Xigbar.”

“Don’t break it,” the shrill one snarks. “Apparently, you were _hard enough to find.”_

“Oh. Sorry,” Demyx shrugs, looking up to the shrill first with the utmost unrepentant vacancy.

“It’s no biggie!” The man beside him speaks, “You’re here now. We’re all gonna be good friends in no time, right?”

“If you say so,” Demyx shrugs, looking between at the other two. Beside him, they called him Xigbar, and he tries to commit that to memory.

“I do say so! You’ve got 8 other friends here now. This handsome fellow is Xaldin,” Xigbar gestures to the third, most imposing of the trio. “And blondie over here is Vexen,” he gestures again to the shrill one.

He blinks up at them, nodding as he tries to remember. “8?”

“Yeahp! So, _you’re_ number 9— remember that too.”

“I’m 9, alright,” Demyx nods.

“And when we’re all said and done, there’ll be 13. We’re Organization 13.”

“Oh, alright… Why 13?”

“Dunno! Boss-man just said it’d be 13, and we’re kinda at his whim.”

Demyx tilts his head curiously like a confused puppy, gaze falling back to Xigbar at his side as the other man reclines into the couch. “Boss-man?.. Xemnas?” He’d spoken his name just once back in the forest, but Demyx remembers it vividly for some reason.

“Yeahp! I’m assuming he’s the one that brought you home, here.”

“Ahh…yeah. He’s nice.”

This causes the three of them to stiffen just a touch. “… I don’t know if I… would…. Yeah, you know what, sure. Xemnas is _nice_.”

Xaldin stifles a rumbling laugh to that, turning towards an opposite couch— the three of them had just returned from a failed scouting mission, here to relax. Speaking at he sits, “No memory of your life though, hmn? At least you seem to have memory of your emotion.”

“I guess so. But it’s not making me feel any better.”

Vexen deigns to stand a moment longer, as he leans down to inspect the new meat discerningly, “Do you feel _anything at all_?” He questions, sneering to Demyx’s adverted gaze.

Taking a long moment to think about that, Demyx tries Vexen’s patience as the clock ticks, “No, I guess I don’t.” Weird? But along that train of thought— it’s not that he feels ‘sad’ without his feeling, either.

Content with that answer, Vexen leans up and plants himself on the couch alongside Xaldin, the two of them fairly ignoring each other. Xigbar leans forwards to catch Demyx’s attention, giving him a pitied look, “Them’s the breaks. Nobody’s, despite being ‘no bodies’, don’t have hearts. And, without your heart, you can’t feel a thing. You’ll get better at faking it, don’t you worry. And if all goes according to plan— we’ll get those hearts back one day.”

Demyx nods, but he still isn’t sure he understands. The water at his feet platters to the floor as his hands stop moving, his thoughts caught up in an endless nothingness.

\---

The distant sound of rain patters heavy across the window to the far side of the room, where inside Demyx sits in that same spot on the couch— though some while since he’d first been sat there. The lights drawn low, only alighted by the occasional flash of lightning, Demyx sits alone deep into the night hours as he often finds himself doing. Far enough away from sleeping quarters, he strums his instrument idly to himself, the tiny dancing notes at his feet moving slow and solemnly— if he remembers that is what a night like this might feel like.

Occasionally, his nights are interrupted by the other 11, Xigbar more often than not. Tonight, however, Demyx attention is perked, looking over his shoulder towards the door expecting the aforementioned- but he’s caught with a lump in his throat when it’s Xemnas’ cold, amber gaze that meets his at the doorway. An armful of paperwork— he comes in during the day occasionally to talk out loud with other members(mostly Saix, Vexen or Zexion), for input on his current work— but no one else is here tonight, just Demyx. Expecting his superior to see this and leave, Demyx swallows, looking forwards again as he continues playing around on his instrument— but to his discomfort, Xemnas enters anyways, finds himself an opposite chair, tugs the center table over with the toe of his boot, and sets his various stacks of books and paper across its uncovered surface to apparently read in the dark. A glow sets to his hand, perusing over the pages with only slightly more advantage than pure darkness, but the low lighting doesn’t seem to perturb him down at all.

Does he… keep playing? Does he leave? Demyx can’t remember the last time he was in a room alone with Xemnas, not that he has an overt fear of him like some others might. But he has an undefinable air to him, that is just. Uncomfortable to be around. Xemnas doesn’t appear to be paying Demyx any mind whatsoever, but he freezes up in confusion to the situation, so his idle strumming has stopped.

After some minutes of that, a deep baritone rumbles the silence, “Feel free to continue.”

Startling out of his frozen thoughts with a peep, he’s glad Xemnas is as straight forward as he’s generally apt to be, and so as Demyx still doesn’t find himself ready to sleep, his fingers find themselves once again to sitar, and a tune from his absent memory fragments the silence between the nearly forgotten rain outside.

It becomes enough of a repeat occurrence that Demyx no longer flinches to the sight and sound of his superior joining him in the middle of the night, and equally that Xemnas starts to recognize the songs Demyx plays in repetition; in familiarity, not just mindless tunes. On particularly_ tired_ nights, Demyx even deigns Xemnas the right to hear his voice, as he generally laments to sing in his ‘emotionless’ stupor, and alongside his strumming, lyrics follow along those now familiar melodies. He’d never tell him, but Xemnas finds his singing significantly less dull than Demyx assumes he’s being. In time, Xemnas even finds use for his music beyond his original intent of background mental occupation, when a pit in his stomach sinks to particularly soft-hearted composures.

One night after many others, and short days after the removal of five members and the addition of two, Demyx interrupts the solitude of one hooded 14th curled up on the couch. She does not perk to his arrival, or his sitting on the couch adjacent to hers, or his playing, and Demyx remembers unfondly back to his days of first ‘awakening’, when he could much like that sit for hours or days unoccupied. So, he doesn’t blame her for her vacancy. Instead, he thinks, maybe he can perk her sentience with a few tunes, whether she likes or hates his strumming. A soft smile breaks his expression when she does, in fact, perk, dull blue eyes peeking out from behind the lip of her hood, albeit just barely, her gaze wandering from his face, to the dancing water at his feet. As their numbers dwindle from the foretold thirteen, Demyx tries to lament the loss of them— but no one person he’d find lost were exactly ‘friends’ to him, though he never ‘minded’ Marluxia… but neither ‘friends’ were any who survived, were they? At the very least, these new two, Roxas and Xion, seemed pretty nice so far, though they were hanging around Axel, and he can only assume that will make them as much of an asshole he is, as he’s been told they carry not even the memory of emotion from their past life as he had.

(<https://youtu.be/semcUTqGGss>)

Since he has company already, Demyx doesn’t exactly expect Xemnas to arrive, but he does, his cold gaze falling curiously to Xion as he enters, and even offering the top of her hood a soft pet before he makes his way to his chosen spot, the only singular chair in a ring of couches. Less paperwork than usual, he sits with legs crossed and a jaw propped up by knuckles, more contemplating something than here to work. It seems almost as if Xemnas was joining Demyx for the sheer… ‘pleasure’, of it, and to that, Demyx wordlessly continues his playing— though it would be the first time Demyx would note he’s come down simply to listen to him. His fingers chime in a melody Xemnas has become quite familiar with, but only in its instrumental; to his new guest and in an attempt to rise her from her stupor, Demyx sinks deep within his removed memory to recall its long-forgotten lyrics. A heart from far away, gifting him these meaningful words from its place he can only assume floats gently alongside the Kingdom Hearts that now barely alights the floor, casting wide shadows from the windows. Alongside those memories of words, visions of long since past violence are cast in his mind; though more like over exposed blots of light burning into the back of his retinas than tangible imagery.

Xemnas quickly gives up hope of getting any of his work done, if he’d expected that at all; with Demyx’s full ‘hearted’ song that creaks from him pitifully, Xemnas’ gaze falls unnoticed to his soft-spoken underling, and then slowly to Xion as she perks up to his song. Music had its way of affecting them, Nobody’s, in the same way Nobody’s effected reality— without true existence, but able to force its will onto those who_ did_ exist. It’s seen easily on Demyx’s face, where his expression warps his internal torment his song brings up to bile in his throat, a pain in his chest. Then, to Xion, a veritably empty shell of a newly built creation, but her eyes alight with that impossible knowing, that completely unexperienced emotion that somehow flows through her form. Even in himself now, Xemnas can not deny that spurning in his chest, from his pale light he could not extinguish. Already risen to torment him just barely by the recent death of his… his comrades, his ‘friends’. He expected Demyx’s songs to peel emotion from him as they had always done before, but not so much that even he wears that abysmal hint of heartache on his face. An uncomfortable tongue rakes over his teeth when he feels that rise of wetness behind his eyes. Be still, you weakness inside me, though I remind myself of your existence for the benefit of knowing your continued strength over my will.

When Demyx finishes his forgotten song, he strangely, stops. Not just playing, but his body, it stops, his non-existence misfiring when the music no longer bolsters his emotional response, and he’s again ripped away from the memory of his heart. With a sigh, Xemnas can only relish in the fact his underling had missed the tear or two that rolled down his cheek, and Xion returns in a similar fashion to her vacant repose. She isn’t apt to remember this night tomorrow either. She is free to stay here for the night, if that is what she wishes, or where she was left by Saix, but Demyx can be owed payment for his continually gracious and personal concerts he gives to Xemnas when he silently requests. Leaving his sparse work on the table to collect in the morning, or to shove off on Saix, Xemnas removes the sitar frozen in Demyx’s grip, hauling the man up into his arms and heading towards the doorway— but to his legitimate surprise, Xigbar lingers at the door, looking like he’d been ‘enjoying’ the song a bit too much as well.

“Well, that felt wholly _persona_l.”

“It might have been. Demyx’s memories are quite strong.”

“Not strong enough to come back to him on his will, though.”

“No. But strong enough to spur him in it’s absence, from an impossible distance.”

“Is this why you keep him around,” Xigbar gestures to the living room with a hand, though Demyx is scooped up unconscious in Xemnas’ arms now. “Let him get away with being lazy? Just so he’ll play you a sad song at night?”

With a low laugh, and he looks down at him in his grasp with the utmost softness, “And what if it is?”

He opens his mouth to rebuke him but closes it with a shrug and a hum. “You’re right, so _what_ if it is…”


	2. Chapter 2

Demyx still can’t even count a time him and Vexen shared a conversation between the two of them— but no ill will, since apparently, they’re in the same boat now. Traitors, like Demyx had been calling Roxas some half-year ago, working against the organization that once saved him from millennia of solitude, and then again from destruction at the hands of the boy he’s now, apparently, rooting for. It’s not his fault that Xemnas went totally off his rocker— or, if he’s to believe what he’s been told, was, always insane. Demyx tries not to think about it too hard.

“There’s _absolutely no way_ Xemnas doesn’t know what you’re doing, by the way, if you used _dusks_ to do it,” Demyx points a finger at the other man as they head into a corridor.

“They were dusks aligned with myself and Roxas, I’m not worried about that,” but Vexen absolutely sounds worried, “I want you to go ahead first with the replica, and once the coast is clear, I’ll send Ansem though.”

“Whatever,” Demyx shrugs, the replica held under his arm delicately wrapped in a blanket, but very much an empty vessel. “We really gotta make it quick, though.”

“Then make it quick!”

They both shuffle into his corridor, into an alley of nothing, but it’s so very… quiet, so eerily void of nobodies, or _anything else_ for that matter, but then again, it was a space of… nothing. Demyx knows something is wrong before it even hints at coming, body stiffening instinctively, though Vexen still appears to be hopeful and suspects nothing. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Demyx has felt that cold presence, that golden gaze of his ‘superior’ sneak up from behind him, though on much more… friendly, states, than this.

“And _what part_ of using my _own creations_ did you think you could get away with.” A rhetorical question, and Vexen shrieks when the air rumbles that ominous baritone before he arrives, teleporting a foot ahead of them. Equally, Vexen shrinks his posture, and it’s not as if Demyx doesn’t cower, but he’s got a a burning in his chest. Looking up from the floor momentarily, Demyx spots a dusk grasped by its neck in Xemnas’ firm grip, squeezing the life out of the creature Vexen knows as one of the few that opted to help him steal Ansem earlier from, well, ‘Ansem’; it writhes is discomfort, but despite its malleable form, can not escape the mortal grip to its throat. Demyx was certain that the heartless, Xemnas’ veritable heart, would immediately tell on them— and so he has, because there Xemnas is, about to destroy them. At least nobody could say they didn’t try, though no one else knew of the attempt beyond Ansem. At least Vexen was right about not immediately bringing Ansem through the corridor?

And well. If he’s going to destroy them _anyways_. Why not this be the one time Demyx speaks his mind? And oh boy, he’s got mind to speak. His hands ball into fists so tight his nails nearly pierce the gloves, knuckles white beneath the leather as it creaks in strain, “I thought we were friends,” Demyx rasps, barely above his voice— but with dire force. Vexen blinks to this sudden change in demeanor, the usually meek Demyx near hisses out his words, like a warning. Demyx can’t look up to face him even, stuck staring his parasitic golden gaze to the floor; he fights past that Xehanort influence deep in his chest, telling it to just shut the fuck up for once in its life.

“You?_ Friends_? With _anyone_?” Xemnas mocks him and his wavering voice, violently tossing the dusk to the ground; he reaches to replace that dusk with Demyx’s neck instead, but he’s cut short when, to his mild surprise, Demyx deigns to continue his plee.

“YEAH, _I DID_,” the force behind him sets Xemnas back half a notch, his reaching hand faltering and falling back down to his side. Vexen stands in frozen silence, staring back at Demyx, silently urging him to _shut up_, but he refuses to be silenced in the face of death. “We were all just a bunch of heart-less jack asses fucking with each other all day— but at the end of the day, WE were _WHAT WE HAD_, YOU KNOW. And then you- you just, lied about it all.” He can’t cry, because he’s so sure can’t feel it— but he’s sniffing up his nose, frustratedly wiping his face with a sleeve before pointing up at him, even as he continues to be unable to look him in the eyes. “Yeah, I thought we were _friends_, Xemnas. The friend who met me at the fountain, like he promised.”

When there’s a long lull of dead silence, still clenched and waiting for the pain of destruction once again, Demyx finally manages to gather his gaze upwards, and what he finds is wholly unexpected. Xemnas’ gaze forced so sidelong the whites of his eyes pressure his pupil nearly out of frame from wide eyelids. A sneer on his lips, an errant twitch, like he’s in some sort of internal conflict— Demyx blinks, looks to the side instead, to Vexen, who stands there in equal terror but confusion, because he has no idea what Demyx is talking about either.

Licking over his teeth, Xemnas finally presses back his pitiful hearts burning, looking downwards to the floor, and then to Demyx’s face where they make eye contact— and feeling that ability to pressure him, that weakness from Xemnas’ neglected, fragmented heart, Demyx holds that contact, expression hardening. His nose wrinkles in distaste, “All those nights you came by. What were you even doing, huh?”

Quietly, “I don’t know.” Vexen mouths the word ‘what’, but Demyx reaches out and shushes him with a palm, still staring forwards at Xemnas, even taking a step towards him, nearly nose to nose beyond the small difference in height.

“So? _Are we friends?”_

A tongue rakes over his teeth again, leaning backwards from Demyx’s insistence as he mulls his apparent options, or rather, he apparent _feelings_ on the matter. Are we friends? What is ‘friends’? Instead— Does it matter if they escape with Ansem? Will it change fate if he lets Demyx live now? No, these things do _not_ matter— and they _can not_ change fate. “It does not matter.”

“Yes, it_ does_,” Demyx barks back, unhearing the mental conversation and what exactly doesn’t ‘matter’ to Xemnas.

“Not to me,” and he turns away from them, offering a singular glance over his shoulder to Demyx, before disappearing back through a corridor.

The two remaining held in stunned silence there for a long few minutes before Demyx speaks, violently rubbing the tears from his face, “Get Ansem _now_, I am_ not _waiting for Xemnas to change his mind..!” Demyx dusts off his pants in a pure nervous tick, hauling up the replica body still in his arms and heading out towards his own corridor, opened to Radiant Garden, and its laboratory where perhaps a friend will enjoy their nearly murdered gift.

The transaction goes smoothly despite the road-bump, and Demyx even manages not to act like he’s been absolutely petrified— but the fear gets the better of him, and while he’d love to sit and give Zexion, or rather Ienzo now, a chat, it’ll have to wait for another day. On account of Xemnas definitely knowing _exactly_ where they went, and no matter how much it seemed he’d won over his favour, Demyx isn’t going to be trusting like that. And he isn’t sticking around to get disintegrated again. Not… _immediately,_ at least. Because there’s still that chance those heroes of light will fail, and that stupid old man and his stupid pieces of darkness will destroy them all. Before he can leave, Ienzo at least manages to get a gummiphone in his pocket, and promises to contact him as soon as everything blows over. Demyx isn’t holding his breath about that promise either.

\---

But… like, where is he going to go to lay low till the end or not end. Demyx doesn’t know any of the worlds_ particularly _well— he’d never went... out, despite all his orders to do so. When he comes down to it, the only place he spent a mote of time in was… Olympus, was it? He’s spent some time there with Roxas in the coliseum, attempting to become more muscular, or something like that. He aptly remembers it… did not work out. And again, he’d went there for scouting work in the later years of the first organization, which also did not turn out! Why is he going back here again… oh yeah. Where else would be go. It’s here or the World that Never Was— and Demyx… kind of wants someone to talk to, if this does happen to be the day of the end of all things.

It’s in a state of mild disrepair when he arrives, early in the morning, but easily enough he finds a nice, flowing fountain to sit next to, even with some bits and pieces of it broken off into rubble. He wonders what could’ve happened, but remembers this place had a problem with an over-zealous fallen God of Death occasionally attempting to annex the world for himself, and can probably blame him for the mess. Occupying himself, Demyx rolls up the sleeves of his black coat ineffectually, reaching into the water’s basin and pulling out those errant chunks of stonework to lay them outside. Peering up at the well worn and broken statue at its center with a sigh, “Yeah, I feel that buddy.”

“Hey— you!” An aggressive voice, and Demyx turns around sharply in fear, arms pulling close to his chest as he tries to find the figure shouting at him— but with a confused blink or two, nothing at his eye level appears… Slowly, Demyx’s yellow gaze falls downwards to the clopping of hooves, and the short statured satyr that tromps up to his heels. Oh! He knows this man! This… goat, man.

“Uh— huh! He, hello~?” He tries to sound non-threatening as possible, assuming that though Demyx remembers _him_, Phil will have no memory of him in return, but the satyr looks up at him discerningly, a hand rubbing under his chin in perhaps, knowing.

“Hhmmnnnn….. Do I know you from somewhere? I was gonna give you a beat-down for looking so shady, stealing rocks from the fountain, but now I’m not so sure!”

“Oh, a—, actually, you do know me! I guess it was.. sort of a while ago, and I didn’t really.. stick around long. You gave me a couple days of uh… ‘training’, I guess.” Yeah, that’s… sort of, what occurred.

“… Ohh, oh yeah! I remember you! You were a weak little baby! What’s-it, Dexy? Medyx?”

Expression dry, Demyx doesn’t look humoured by the way the fat, stubby satyr words that. “Uhm, it was, Demyx, but like I said, I was there for a day or two, tops. I don’t blame you for not remembering,” but he still looks a little hurt, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“Ha, don’t look so bad! I did remember you, I promise. How’s the ol’ fighting chops lookin’, huh?!”

… Weakly flexing, “.. Not so great! Some people just aren’t built for fighting, no matter how much my boss thought otherwise.” He’s fairly certain Phil saw the beat-down Saix gave him.

“Ohhh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Phil leans in to give him an ineffectual punch to the calf, but he still flinches with a yelp. “You look like you’re doing fine for yourself! Other than ah, lookin’ kind of shady.”

“I wasn’t… stealing rocks. I was just taking them out of this fountain, since they don’t belong in there,” Demyx flicks out a now wet sleeve, regretting his choices, but the fountain does look much nicer now, even if it’s surrounded by rubble.

“Well, are you doin’ anything but taking crap outta fountains?”

“N… no, not really. I was… waiting for something to happen, I guess… But like.. I can wait for it to happen anywhere.” He doesn’t have the ‘heart’ to tell him that’s he’s waiting for the… end of the universe to happen or not happen. There’s no sense giving them false fear if he’s wrong— or stressing anyone out about something they absolutely can not help fight against here.

Raising an eyebrow to that, but Phil doesn’t question it, just shrugging, “You look lonely, you should come hang out with me and my best bud Hercules! Since you were helpin’ clean up anyways, I can REALLY put you to work.”

Rolling his eyes, Demyx isn’t sure he wants to be put to ‘real’ work, but… Really, he isn’t doing anything else, “Alright, why not! No sense in me just… moping around all day, right?” He knows Hercules, too, albeit only because he’d failed to wrestle him once. He won’t be surprised if Herc doesn’t remember this face either.

Phil leads the way, looking back to Demyx over his shoulder, “Whatcha moping for! It’s a great day out today.”

It’s true. The sun is rising to a cloudless sky, the air comfortably warm. The civilians rise to the morning air, greeting them as they walk by, friendly and inviting, and despite the carnage that took place some weeks earlier, no one seems to be taken back by the state of their city. “The thing I’m waiting for is… not great.”

“Heh? Then why are you_ waitin’_ for it?” Phil looks up at him in confusion, shrugging wide with both arms.

“I can’t really… avoid it,” Demyx can’t seems to get the discomfort off his face, “so I guess, it’s less like I’m ‘waiting’, more like I’m wasting time till it comes.” Please don’t ask me what it is, please don’t ask me what it is.

“Hey Phil!” A well-built man calls to the both of them with a wide wave of his arm from across a walkway, and then bounces towards them, “Who’s this?” He has an nearly infectious smile, a comforting air of strength about him that already has Demyx straightening out his abysmal posture.

“Dexy!” Phil gestures to him with the utmost confidence he wasn’t fucking up his name.

“Demyx,” he corrects, not taking it to heart. Demyx knows he is not the memorable type.

“Ehh, close enough. A kid I gave the run around to a couple years back! Found him stealing rocks from a fountain.”

Quietly, and rubbing the bridge of his nose, “I wasn’t… stealing rocks….”

At the very least, Hercules seems to sympathize with him and the exasperation to Phil’s demeanor, offering a firm pat to his shoulder, “Hey there! I’m Hercules. Demyx, right? I think we have met, just the once maybe?” And he offers a hand to shake, which Demyx reciprocates after a moment of looking down at the other man’s massive palm.

“Yeah. I’m just… visiting again, I guess.”

“Kinda came at a rough time,” he looks over his shoulder to the various disarray around him. “You don’t look so hot yourself. Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” Hercules pulls his hand back after the handshake, rubbing the back of his neck with a wide smile, eyebrow knit apologetically.

“No— it’s fine, yeah,” Demyx raises defensive hands, forcing a smile, “I kinda came here to… I dunno, cheer myself up.” And it was, honestly, sort of working! No matter how many times Phil didn’t remember his name, he DID remember he was a person he knew, and Herc immediately throws down the charm to try to cheer up the near stranger. “Hey— Phil said you guys were cleaning up, said maybe I could... help?” Something to do, something to keep his mind of the impending doom.

Smiling brightly down at him, “Of course you can! We’re always looking for more hands to lend a hand.”

“I mean, I can’t say I’m very strong…”

“Well, that’s alright! You can always hit look out— while I carry the big stuff, you can lead the way.”

Demyx looks like he’s having trouble not getting blubbery about how nice he’s being to him, but aggressively rubs off his face, and nods in agreement.

Demyx does manage to get some actual physical labour in hauling a few things, but to Hercules’ words, he mostly spends his morning and afternoon directing traffic. As the day turns itself into evening, Demyx has all but forgotten the doom impended on the horizon, and as they sit down to enjoy a meal in a wide group of civilians and Hercules’ friends, Demyx pulls out his sitar to play them a nice, comfortable tune— though not before stealing some choice food first. It’s a good thing he’s a friend of Hercules, too, because as he plays, the water nearby pools ‘strangely’ near his legs, and dances around with the beautiful songs he produces, the civilians understandably wary of magic these days.

On account of becoming lost in his music, it catches him off-guard when the sky grows suddenly shades darker than it had been in the red evening glow moment ago— until it becomes no longer dark, and a giant, uncomfortably_ familiar_ sight beats into life before his eyes. Its pale yellow glow alights the ground beneath it, but it twists Demyx’s stomach in knots when its glow turns sharply blue instead. Kingdom Hearts— its existence pulsates in the air, flickering in and out of existence like a hologram from its likely far distance away. Projecting its coming calamity to across the worlds. From the familiarity he holds in his petrified expression, Hercules grabs his attention with a hand over his shoulder and a curt shaking, “Demyx— _what is that_?”

Phil exclaims at well, “God kid— is _that _what you were waiting for?!”

“Y-yes, it is, and, it’s… oh god,” he regrets not just… telling them, earlier, the civilians around them spilling into screams and running at the sight of this massive heart-shaped moon seemingly splitting the sky from the void above them. “We’re all gonna die,” he squeaks out, wringing his hands together.

Lips pursed, Hercules shakes his head, “No— not yet. I’ve been through disasters worse than some _moon_ before.”

“Nooo, no no no— you, you don’t _understand_ what that _is_— it’s, that’s _Kingdom Hearts_. The heart, of all worlds,” Demyx exclaims, widely swinging his arms with his desperate explanation, “and an evil dude is going to use it to _destroy itself_. Or something like that_\- I don’t know_! I never paid attention! I was trying to ignore my problems like I always do!” Demyx shrills, burying his face in his hands to avoid looking his new friends in the face while he professes the apocalypse.

Eyebrows furrowed, Herc’s eyes fall up to the moon and its flickering existence, “There can’t be… _nothing_ we can do.”

“Umm…” Demyx despondant gaze follows Hercules’, just in time for dollops of darkness to start pouring from the infected heart above them. “… You’re the hero of this world, right? That means you probably know Sora.”

“I do, yeah. I saw him really recently— is this what he was fighting for?”

Demyx nods aggressively, “Yes— and if you want to help, all we can do is hope, wish, know that him and his friends can do it.”

Still with a firm grip on Demyx shoulder, he looks down at him with the conviction of a man who _knows,_ “Sora can do this.”

Pitifully, though, as Demyx looks back up to him, he is almost entirely unconvinced. But then again, he doesn’t really know Sora at all, does he. He knew Roxas. And Roxas was back— he hopes, at least, with that new replica body. And when he thinks about it more, and with Hercules conviction, slowly Demyx expression fades to less dire, swallowing roughly as he looks back to the darkness forming on the horizon. “We… there’s, there are going to be heartless spawning— we, we’re gonna need to do something about that,” and though he abhors fighting, Demyx refuses to continue to sit and do nothing.

It admittedly also makes it much easier with Hercules fighting alongside him, and there’s less heartless than he was expecting to find, they scour the city for any errant tromping of shades that spawn with each downpour of darkness that projection spills across the land. Just as suddenly as it appears, however, some hour later, the sky cracks with energy, and Demyx falls to his knees in terror at the coming end; rather, however, the clouds move in to encompass the moon as its colour fades back to gold, and then sinks away into the void it appeared from. With pure, unrestrained excitement, Demyx leaps to his feet again, “THEY DID IT, THEY AC- AAGGH—” he’s cut off by a splitting pain in his chest, as the parasitic shard of Xehanort pulls itself from his heart, and disintegrates into nothing, leaving him….vacant.

At the very least, Hercules manages to rush over and catch him before he breaks his skull on the rocky ground beneath him. Demyx isn’t knocked unconscious, per-say, but without that energy from Xehanort fueling him, his body too keenly remembers its lacking existence, and he feels himself… fading, back into the nothing he belongs, pieces of him falling apart with that shard of heart that had removed itself moments before. With a soft sigh— he shouldn’t have expected better. At least, at least everyone else was safe now. Maybe even because he’d deigned to help Vexen bring Roxas a body, and Ansem home. With that thought in his mind, he thinks he might not mind fading too much now.

“Hey- hey now, where do you think you’re going?”

Demyx opens his eyes again to the urging of the man above him. Looking up at him with those wide, now once again sky-blue eyes, Demyx shrugs, “They won, so I can go now, I think.”

“You seemed like you still had things you want to do,” eyebrows furrowed, Herc tries to prop him up sitting, and after a moment Demyx obliges, but still doesn’t seem quite right.

Demyx doesn’t remember. A rumble in the back of his mind, though. ‘Hold onto those memories of yours, Demyx.’ Where he doesn’t remember his memories, he remembers the nothing of songs in his mind, humming quietly to himself. Sitting more upright as he clings to existence on the songs in his memory. “Yeah, I guess I do…. Thanks, man,” though his tone sounds dead and empty. Maybe that parasitic heart of Xehanort was doing more than just empowering him in general— without a ‘heart’ again, his true heart was at a distance and his ‘fake’, regrown heart was either damaged or missing. Slowly, Demyx moves to stand, even with Hercules’ help he wobbles on heels, “There might be more heartless around, so you should check everywhere to make sure none snuck by.”

“Of course, but let’s get you somewhere to sit down for a bit first, alright?” he urges him to walk back towards the town, but Demyx shrugs it off.

“Sorry, I’d love to stick around, but now that it’s all over, I… I should go home.”

“Are you sure? You can stay here for a bit, there’s no rush—” but Herc’s cut off when a corridor opens beside him, startling from sudden portal.

“Nah, it’s alright. Maybe I’ll come back later when this all blows over.”

\---

The World that Never Was is dark, empty, and raining. The nobodies that still inhabit it seem frozen in time, frozen by the understanding of their new reality; without direction or order, their superior gone, hopeless. All that remains is. Demyx.

And he’s tired.

He’s so incredibly tired.

With a great creaking and crack, the castle breaks from its invisible hinges, and as Demyx watches it from a high building nearby, it crashes into the crater it was segmented from in the first place. Left slightly on its side— but that’s where Demyx’s room is, and the thought of being ‘home’ consumes him. That’s where he lives, lived for years and year. All ‘he’ knows of living, where his damned, foreign memory refused to come back to him.

When it seems to settle into its broken crater, he heads inside to check the damage, he supposes. In each hallway, nobodies still linger in their frozen states, heads tilting every so slightly as Demyx sneaks by them; a dragoon, a gambler. A sniper that moves more than the others, but still stilted and slow as it skirts across a broken expanse. Dancers sprout from their hidden places to their master, but he has no energy to give them, so their pace sets lackluster and drawling to either side as he continues inside. Idly, he offers each beside him a soft pet, fingers barely tracing across the tops of their heads.

Even in the darkness, he remembers enough the hallways, stops momentarily to peer into the pitch-black living room he’d become accustomed too. Vacant, and dark.

His room is empty, as they’d all generally lacked to keeping personal items, but it was still _his_, and empty as his room was now. Two dancers still linger at his heel, but all he can offer them is another soft pat, “It’s alright, It’ll be fine. I just wanna lay down for a bit, ok? I’m just… really tired,” and he curls under the blankets of his bed while they softly warble to each other, curling up next to him. The whole building shifted slightly at an angle, it takes a few tries to set down his gummiphone on the nearby nightstand without it toppling to the floor, but he does manage.

So far, no messages. He’s not surprised.

\--

12 missed messages, but he doesn’t rise.

Has the angle of the castle changed? Whatever.

\--

An idle feeling of being watched, but he doesn’t rise.

\--

27 missed calls.


End file.
